How To

Secure Messaging App – mHealth Vendor Evaluation Checklist

June 26, 2014 | Adam Turinas

If you are in the process of selecting a secure texting provider, you are probably a little overwhelmed by the choices. On the surface they all seem the same but there are many factors to consider and dozens of questions to answer.

We talk with Healthcare IT executives each day and based on their feedback we came up with nine big questions that need to be asked as you evaluate secure text vendors:

1. HIPAA Compliance: How specifically and in detail is the secure texting provider’s solution HIPAA compliant?

3. Notifications: What types of notifications are provided and what are user open rates?

4. Groups: How are care teams and messaging groups created and managed?

5. Clinical Workflows: How does the app fit into and improve your particular clinical workflows?

6. Voice: Can users place voice calls through the application, and is VOIP an option?

7. User Experience: What user-friendly features are included that help drive efficiencies and physician adoption of the system?

8. Satisfaction, Support and Adoption: This issue is as important as the application’s features. If the vendor you select does not help you drive adoption then you will not achieve your HIPAA compliance goals. How will the vendor ensure that high adoption and usage are achieved?

Underneath each question there are many specific issues to probe on. To help to make the process easier for you we created a simple check-list that you can use to compare vendors. We hope you find this helpful and please let us know if we missed anything.